Can Modus Vivendi Save Liberalism from Moralism? A Critical Assessment of John Gray’s Political Realism

This chapter assesses John Gray’s modus vivendi-based justification for liberalism. I argue that his approach is preferable to the more orthodox deontological or teleological justificatory strategies, at least because of the way it can deal with the problem of diversity. But then I show how that is not good news for liberalism, for grounding liberal political authority in a modus vivendi undermines liberalism’s aspiration to occupy a privileged normative position vis-à-vis other kinds of regimes. So modus vivendi can save liberalism from moralism, but at cost many liberals will not be prepared to pay

Religion and Theistic Faith: On Koppelman, Leiter, Secular Purpose, and Accomodations

What makes religion distinctive, and how does answering that question help us answer questions regarding religious freedom in a liberal democracy? In their books on religion in the United States under our Constitution, Andrew Koppelman (DefendingAmerican Religious Neutrality) and Brian Leiter (Why Tolerate Religion?) offer sharply different answers to this set of questions. This review essay first explores why we might treat religion distinctively, suggesting that in our constitutional order, it makes sense to focus on theism (or any roughly similar analogue) as the hallmark of religious belief and practice. Neither Koppelman nor Leiter focuses on this, in part because it seems to exclude nontheistic religions that are part of the American fabric. I think this is a mistake, and will explain why

Religion and Theistic Faith: On Koppelman, Leiter, Secular Purpose, and Accomodations

What makes religion distinctive, and how does answering that question help us answer questions regarding religious freedom in a liberal democracy? In their books on religion in the United States under our Constitution, Andrew Koppelman (DefendingAmerican Religious Neutrality) and Brian Leiter (Why Tolerate Religion?) offer sharply different answers to this set of questions. This review essay first explores why we might treat religion distinctively, suggesting that in our constitutional order, it makes sense to focus on theism (or any roughly similar analogue) as the hallmark of religious belief and practice. Neither Koppelman nor Leiter focuses on this, in part because it seems to exclude nontheistic religions that are part of the American fabric. I think this is a mistake, and will explain why

Religion and Theistic Faith: On Koppelman, Leiter, Secular Purpose, and Accomodations

What makes religion distinctive, and how does answering that question help us answer questions regarding religious freedom in a liberal democracy? In their books on religion in the United States under our Constitution, Andrew Koppelman (DefendingAmerican Religious Neutrality) and Brian Leiter (Why Tolerate Religion?) offer sharply different answers to this set of questions. This review essay first explores why we might treat religion distinctively, suggesting that in our constitutional order, it makes sense to focus on theism (or any roughly similar analogue) as the hallmark of religious belief and practice. Neither Koppelman nor Leiter focuses on this, in part because it seems to exclude nontheistic religions that are part of the American fabric. I think this is a mistake, and will explain why

The City as an Arena for the Expression of Multiple Identities in the Age of Globalisation and Migration

This paper discusses the concept of toleration as it has been manifested in modern society through two contrasting processes—the prevalence of group identity, and the prevalence of identity defined according to citizenship and individual rights. Referring primarily to the work of political theorist Michael Walzer, the paper describes the historical development of toleration in the U.S., insofar as it is an immigrant nation which has passed through several phases of intolerance and toleration that continue to characterise the dynamics of American society, particularly in the city. Special reference is made to the city of Chicago, the largest city in the Midwest, where immigrants from all over settled, establishing ethnic neighbourhoods. Globalisation and migration have made diversity a defining feature of contemporary society, and cities in particular. The multiplication of identities is being experienced on an individual level as well, giving rise to the recognition of the increasingly ‘hybrid’ nature of social and personal identification. The paper concludes by calling into question the implications of this post-modern model on the conceptualisation of toleration as well as its manifestations. Keywords: Toleration, Multiculturalism, Migration, Cultural pluralism, Ethnic self-assertion

Sovereign Debt: Now What?

The sovereign debt restructuring regime looks like it is coming apart. Changing patterns of capital flows, old creditors’ weakening commitment to past practices, and other stakeholders’ inability to take over, or coalesce behind a viable alternative, have challenged the regime from the moment it took shape in the mid-1990s. By 2016, its survival cannot be taken for granted. Crises in Argentina, Greece, and Ukraine since 2010 exposed the regime’s perennial failures and new shortcomings. Until an alternative emerges, there may be messier, more protracted restructurings, more demands on public resources, and more pressure on national courts to intervene in disputes that they are ill-suited to resolve. Initiatives emanating from wildly different actors — the United Nations General Assembly, the International Monetary Fund, the International Capital Market Association and the Jubilee coalition, among others — reflect broad-based demand for reform. Now is the time to reconsider the institutional architecture of sovereign debt restructuring, along with the norms and alliances that underpin it. In this symposium essay, I suggest broad criteria for evaluating a successor regime, and offer a package of incremental measures to advance sustainability, fairness, and accountability

Theory of Values

Economists have a well-developed theory of value but the theory of why people hold the values they do is rudimentary at best. In spite of the fact that it is common to argue that values are important, most work on values is normative and the positive theory of values is relatively under- developed. In this paper we propose a simple yet general way to think about values - they are about how one trades-off one own's utility against that of others - and argue that we can draw on the large literature on pro-social behavior for hypotheses on how people will choose values. Then, using data from the UK's Citizenship Survey we show how models of self-interest, fairness, reciprocity and identity, can explain many of the patterns that we observe in the data across a wide variety of values.Values, Pro-Social Behaviour

Citizenship deprivation

Most critical analyses assess citizenship-deprivation policies against international human rights and domestic rule of law standards, such as prevention of statelessness, non-arbitrariness with regard to justifications and judicial remedies, or non-discrimination between different categories of citizens. This report considers instead from a political theory perspective how deprivation policies reflect specific conceptions of political community. We distinguish four normative conceptions of the grounds of membership in a political community that apply to decisions on acquisition and loss of citizenship status: i) a ‘State discretion’ view, according to which governments should be as free as possible in pursuing State interests when determining citizenship status; ii) an ‘individual choice’ view, according to which individuals should be as free as possible in choosing their citizenship status; iii) an ‘ascriptive community’ view, according to which both State and individual choices should be minimised through automatic determination of membership based on objective criteria such as the circumstances of birth; and iv) a ‘genuine link’ view, according to which the ties of individuals to particular States determine their claims to inclusion and against deprivation while providing at the same time objections against including individuals without genuine links. We argue that most citizenship laws combine these four normative views in different ways, but that from a democratic perspective the ‘genuine link’ view is normatively preferable to the others. The report subsequently examines five general grounds for citizenship withdrawal – threats to public security, non-compliance with citizenship duties, flawed acquisition, derivative loss and loss of genuine links – and considers how the four normative views apply to withdrawal provision motivated by these concerns. The final section of the report examines whether EU citizenship provides additional reasons for protection against Member States’ powers of citizenship deprivation. We suggest that, in addition to fundamental rights protection through EU law and protection of free movement rights, three further arguments could be invoked: toleration of dual citizenship in a political union, prevention of unequal conditions for loss among EU citizens, and the salience of genuine links to the EU itself rather than merely to one of its Member States